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MPs' expenses have hit the headlines – even in The MJ (2 April) – but Nick Raynsford says they are legitimately incurred, in most cases. As everyone is well aware it is now open season for attacks on MPs and their ‘perks'. In the coming month or two, as the full detail of MPs' expense claims from recent years are published, we can expect far more. Indeed I anticipate a long, hot summer of mounting public indignation fuelled by an almost limitless flow of revelations about what appear to be a shameless abuse of expenses. The MJ has not resisted the temptation to join the hue and cry, publishing on 2 April a summary of John Healey's 2007/8 salary and expenses, totalling £241,381, under the headline: ‘MP's allowances row dwarfs top pay rules'. The inference that expenses are no more than salary top-ups allowing Ministers and MPs to trouser sums of money, the like of which most council chief executives can only dream of, was reinforced by the Comment in the same issue. I accept I am not an entirely dispassionate observer of this debate, and I also admit to being a little bit miffed by the dismissive editorial comments about back-bench MPs – of which I am one. Having said that, I was disappointed at a misleading and tendentious presentation of the issues relating to ministerial pay and expenses in the context of Government expectations of transparency in relation to the remuneration of senior local government figures. Any fair-minded reader of the article will have noted that by far and away the largest element in Mr Healey's expenses (£113,831 out of a total of £137,331) are the cost of running his office. The same applies to almost every MP and simply reflects the rather curious way in which Parliament categorises such costs as expenses. Once such costs are removed from the equation, a very different picture emerges. Apart from office costs, the two other expense headings were the cost of maintaining a second home and the communications allowance – incorrectly described in your article as Commons Allowance. The Communications Allowance enables MPs to fund non-partisan communications with their electors. In my case I use this allowance to pay for an annual report on my activities as an MP to be distributed to all constituents. I make no apology for such expenditure. The root cause of most of the recent furore about MPs' expenses is the second home allowance. As an Inner London MP I am not eligible for such an allowance and would not have claimed it if I had been, as I live only seven miles from Westminster. Most MPs are not in this position. Where they represent constituencies at a distance from Westminster they do need accommodation in their constituency and London to enable them to do their job. The existence of an allowance to cover the extra costs incurred by having to spend part of each week in different locations is not wrong. Nor are the sums involved particularly extravagant. If a local authority chief executive or a senior business executive had to spend three days every week away from home as a condition of their work, they would probably charge more in annual hotel bills than the £18,674 you quoted as John Healey's allowance in 2007/8. I suspect that if a flat rate allowance had been agreed at around this level for MPs with constituencies more than, say, 50 miles – or a specified travelling time – away from Westminster, there would be few complaints from the public. What is wrong, however, is a system which enables MPs to claim inappropriate items of expenditure under this heading, which, when exposed to public view, implies a gravy train occupied by greedy and unprincipled politicians. So the expenses regime does need reform to enable MPs to meet the genuine costs of their job, including office expenditure, without this being misrepresented as a perk. When this has been done, as I sincerely hope it soon will be, the furore will die down. The issue of remuneration levels and pay increases for senior figures in local government may, however, continue to attract public comment. Nick Raynsford MP is a former local government minister

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FINANCE

There's no gravy on this train

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